Oh dear, deer
My blog is becoming an intangible mass of the personal, the professional, the political and the pointless – a bit like my life. I was going to say something about the Pope, but even I’m suffering from pope-fatigue, so in this blog I’m going to focus on the personal.
The promises of jam tomorrow were getting frustrating last week, there seems to be work on the horizon but there was a frustrating lack of anything to be getting on with. I spent some time thinking about how I use my websites, and thanks to some really inspiring input from an ex law student of mine I have what I think is a really exciting project in the pipeline, which I’m sure I’ll bore you with in a future blog. I also decided to start baking my own bread, which is both simple and highly rewarding – I’d recommend it.
I enjoy food, all aspects of food from growing it to eating and especially sharing it with others, turning up to my parents with a freshly baked loaf and waving goodbye to my sister, an apple and rhubarb cake tucked under her arm, were rewarding moments. As my reader will know this relationship with food, especially meat, has caused me to constantly question what I eat and what I feed to the toddler. I blogged here seeking input on the ‘meat dilemma’, those who know me will appreciate that I can be bloody-minded but on this occasion I reflected on comments and decided I would change my position. Thank you to all those who contributed. My objection isn’t to eating flesh but to inhumane farming methods and to putting crap into mine and the toddler’s bodies. I am going to change our eating habits so I eat less meat and only eat high welfare meat, either that which was hunted wild or butchered from organic, free-range animals.
This weekend we had the sort of shared meal that I would like to have more often – I love having family and friends round the dining table, eating and drinking. On Sunday morning Pa Cartwright and my sister both completed the Cransley Hospice half-marathon, I’m immensely proud of both of them. Afterwards we all came back to venison stew served with home-made spelt bread and followed by apple and rhubarb cake – family chat over good food is what Sundays should be all about. I know we could have had as much enjoyment around a vegetarian meal – we have in the past – but I have no objection to eating responsibly culled deer and I know what went into the toddler because everything, including the stock, was home-made, the potatoes were even ones the toddler had dug up.
I’m excited about our new food journey, an organic fruit and veg box delivered fortnightly guiding our meal plans, a small amount of good meat, plenty of fish and home baked bread and cakes. Yum.
